


Nerf Wool

by elorrainem



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Cold Weather, Comfort, Fiber Arts, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, I love these three, Rey is a smart scavenger, Rey is not just a mechanical genius, Seasonal, cuteness, literally fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 17:15:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8925589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elorrainem/pseuds/elorrainem
Summary: Yet another post-Force Awakens Rey-and-Poe-at-Finn’s-bedside fic. Rey learned all kinds of survival skills on Jakku. Finn still hates Jakku. Poe adores them both.





	

Poe pulled his gaze from Finn for a moment to look at Rey.

“What is that?” he asked. She had a pile of fluff next to her which had been steadily growing like storm clouds on a hot day. A hot day sounded like heaven to Poe right then.

Rey combed one more time roughly through the fluff. “Nerf wool,” she said while setting down the combs. 

She has been scurrying and hunting around for various supplies since they arrived on this planet and set up a new Resistance base. Poe noticed her doing what she knew best more and more as he was able to fly Black One in and out of atmo less and less. It must have been autumn on this planet when they found it because the average high and low temperatures have dropped further and further each day. And then the siege began. 

“But…how…I don’t even know if I want to know…” 

“They are wonderful animals,” Rey exclaimed happily. “There’s nothing like them on Jakku!”

Finn stirred and they both slid their chairs as close to the bed as possible.

“Not going…” he muttered, “…won’t go back.”

“Finn buddy, it’s okay,” Poe assured. 

“You’re not going back, don’t worry,” Rey said “I’m not. none of us are.” She smoothed her hand over his curls and placed the lightest possible kiss right at his hairline, just as she had before leaving to find Luke. The kiss seemed to pull him out of whatever fitful desert dream their conversation had triggered. 

Doctor Kalonia had brought Finn out of the medically-induced coma only recently. They had kept him under for the transport from D’Qar and restabilized him once they arrived here. 

She said he would make a full recovery with time but it was going to be hard work. For now, he was on sedation shifts and only awake a few hours each day, beginning to reorient himself and do basic physical therapy. 

Rey looked up over Finn’s bed after lowering back down into her chair to see Poe’s brown eyes regarding her warmly. He smiled that smile right to the crinkles around his eyes and she flushed a little. But Finn was breathing evenly again. 

She turned back toward the cloud of nerf wool. She could still feel Poe’s eyes following her, a sort of heat spreading through her torso and out to her fingertips. 

Grabbing her hand-made spindle, she squeezed it between her thighs while Poe scooted his chair around the end of the bed. 

Rey held up one end of the fluff, and was twisting it between and around her fingers when she saw Poe staring intently at her with his mouth hanging open.   
She smiled at him and his eyes wandered back over to Finn, but she could feel his attention snap right back to her once she looped the twist around the hook of the spindle, and then took the spindle up and gave it a spin to build up the tension and finally unleash the stored energy into the roving fluff. 

Fascinated, Poe watched as Rey spun, pulled on the fluff, twisted and spun again. 

“You’re making yarn!” he said. “How do you know how to do that?”

“When I was small, when I still worked directly for Unkar Plutt, there was an older woman. She took me under her wing and taught me how to make things for myself so I wouldn’t have to rely on the traders who came to Niima Outpost. Also for the times between their visits.”

Rey paused to wrap yarn around the spindle. Her fingers moved deftly to pull and draft the wool while yarn appeared quickly and smoothly, and to Poe it looked as if it appeared by magic. 

“I’ve never been able to make anything out of such beautiful fiber as this though,” she sighed and went on, “mostly, before,” she glanced at Finn to find him sleeping soundly, “I could only find plant fibers, things that grew near any water I came across while I was scavenging.”

She stopped talking when she reached the end of the wool, and pulled the ball of yarn that was wrapped around the spindle off. 

Holding it out to him, she said, “Feel how plush and soft this is!” Then she wrinkled her nose for a moment. “Of course, I had to do a lot of washing to get rid of the smell and the nerf saliva…amongst other stuff.”

Frowning at first, Poe took the ball of yarn, but broke into a grin right away.

“Now what do you do with it?” he asked and leaned forward close to Rey.

“Come here,” she told him.

Poe scooched right alongside Rey to watch. She took a large needle carved out of wood from the pocket of her new shirt and threaded one end of her yarn through it. Then she unraveled a long length of yarn and tore it off. 

Next Rey took the end of the yarn she just tore off and wrapped it several times around her fingers, pulled it off and with a flick and twist of the needle she was pulling it through the loops between her fingers. 

Poe had to lean back fast as Rey’s arm reached out to pull the yarn up and all the way through the loops until one loop of yarn was left tight around her left thumb.

After a while, Poe got up to go to the mess for some food for them both. He pulled on all his many layers of clothing and ventured out into the darkening evening to walk the short distance between prefab medical and mess buildings. 

It was his turn tonight to get their supper and he picked out all of Rey’s favorites from what little variety the Resistance had left. Rey was impressed with all the food she had ever seen in the mess though, so it wasn’t difficult. 

On the way back he took a detour to Rey’s space in the barracks because he noticed she didn’t have her extra warm boots and it was getting even colder than it had been lately as winter deepened around them. 

BB-8 rolled up alongside him as he trudged back to medical. “It’s colder than Hoth out here,” e beeped. 

He thought of the General grumbling about Hoth and laughed a little. At least it wasn’t that bad. “Yet,” he had to remind himself, as he noticed it had started to snow. 

When he walked into medical he saw that the spiral she had begun was transforming into a hat. 

Poe scooped spoonfuls of a warm stew of beans and pulses into his mouth while Rey grabbed the dense bread from the tray he set down between them. She continued pulling the needle through her work again and again, munching on her food. 

“Thanks,” she murmured as she slipped her feet into the boots. 

Eventually Poe finished his stew and propped his feet up on the end of Finn’s bed, settling into his chair. Beside him BB-8 burbled in a way Poe knew signified contentment and happiness at being near eir beings. 

Sometime later Poe awoke to Rey gently placing the hat over his unruly hair. 

“Mmmm,” he smiled sleepily and opened his eyes to see Rey smiling shyly.

“Do you like it?” she asked.

Feeling his head and the soft yarn now bound into a hat, he pulled it off and looked at it. “I love it,” he said softly.

Rey beamed at him.

“I think someone needs it more than me, though,” Poe goes on. 

He got up and carefully slid the hat onto Finn’s head. He stirred slightly and Rey was instantly there to pull his blankets up to his chin. 

She looked at Poe over Finn’s head and Poe looked back. 

“There’s plenty more woolen things coming soon from where that came from,” she whispered.

**Author's Note:**

> The description of Rey spinning is accurate to the suspended or ‘drop’ spindle method of hand-spinning from roving wool. 
> 
> The craft Rey is doing to make the hat is an ancient fabric creation technique, examples of which can be found from cultures around the world. It survives today as a living tradition in Finland and the Nordic countries, where is it called nalebinding or nålbinding or variation of those words. In English it can be referred to as needle binding. 
> 
> One last note - Rey is able to spin a ball of yarn and needle bind a hat extremely fast in this story, because she’s an awesome superhuman badass.


End file.
